


Yeah, You'd Puke Too

by Wonderlandleighleigh



Series: The Loft Kids [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Chuck (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Kid Fic, mentions of throw up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 21:09:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1442983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wonderlandleighleigh/pseuds/Wonderlandleighleigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before being sent to boarding school in upstate New York, Joey Rogers went to public school in the City. It didn't go great...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yeah, You'd Puke Too

Public school is tough on Joseph Abraham Rogers. 

He's handsome and tall and broad-shouldered for a fifteen-year-old, but he plays guitar instead of football, so not all the kids are nice to him, and half the teachers seem to be afraid of him, while the other half look like they want to poke him with a stick; see what makes the son of America's Greatest Hero tick. 

He's got a couple of good friends, and the one teacher who treats him like all the other kids is the music teacher. 

So Joey goes through his days quietly. He eats lunch in one of the practice rooms, going through piano scales in-between bites of his sandwich, poking his head out to say high to a couple of friends. 

History is the class right after lunch, and he gets there before the bell, taking a seat in the back. 

Mr. Webton gives him an appraising look. He's in his sixties, and he doesn't like many of his students. Maybe once he did, but certainly not anymore, and definitely not Joey. 

The class fills in, and one of the girls sits next to him. He gives her a polite nod as he taps his pencil on his notebook, waiting for class to start.

"We've got a video today," Mr. Webton says, waving a black DVD box with a label that Joey can't read this far away. "Take notes. There's gonna be a quiz." 

Joey frowns when he realizes Webton is looking at him. 

'That's never a good sign,' he thinks, but gets ready to take notes as the film starts. 

_"In the Dark Days after Pearl Harbor, the United States tries many different ways to find advantages over the Axis powers."_

Joey tenses up as the film goes on. They've been covering World War Two and he's been dreading this. He'd been hoping he'd have some time to talk to Webton about this, but no dice. 

_"Steven G Rogers was a young man from Brooklyn, New York. The son of poor Irish immigrants, he had attempted to enlist multiple times before Doctor Abraham Erskine gave him a chance in the form of the Strategic Scientific Reserve..."_

Joey's seen some of the photos...he knows what his father went through...Not in so many words. He never really spoke of things like being orphaned, or living through the depression, but Joey knows. He feels his stomach twist and turn to see all of it laid out like this. It's so clinical and heartless...the old photos of his father and Uncle Bucky looking so young and so hungry...the grainy footage from basic training...

The film goes on, in painful detail. Not all the details correct, but they're there, and Joey feels his head swimming. 

This is his father. This man who raised him; has wiped tears and kissed bumps and dropped him off at friends' houses and bought him birthday cakes and coached his little league team...

His mouth goes dry when he hears his father's voice.

_"I gotta put her in the water."_

He's always known that his dad died once. They don't talk about it a lot. It's a part of history that his father's done his level best to deal with and move on from, and the one time Joey did ask about it, his father had reached out, gently gripped his shoulders, looked him in the eyes and said "It happened. But the important thing is that I'm here now, son. With you. And I wouldn't trade that for anything." 

Joey'd only been eight. It had been a short, put important conversation. 

But listening to his father's shaky, obviously scared voice on the video is too much. 

_"You know, I still don't know how to dance."_

Joey's out of his seat abruptly, messily knocking his own notebook off his desk. He stumbles toward the front of the room, his vision feeling blurry, a cold sweat settling over his whole body, lightly matting his dark hair to his forehead. 

"Mr. Webton," he says as he reaches his teacher's desk. "Sir I don't feel so good, I need-" 

He doesn't get to finish the sentence before his half-digested lunch makes an unwelcome entrance all over Webton's desk. 

*****

It's rare that Steve Rogers gets phone calls about his son. It's usually Hannah, his daughter. At the age of eight, she has a mouth on her that sometimes puts her Uncle Tony to shame. 

She's whip smart and doesn't take anyone's crap, just like her mother.

Joey is sweet and easygoing. Thoughtful. Steve doesn't know where he gets it from. He used to think Joey was a lot like him, except for his ash brown hair and slightly less pale skin, but Steve had always been a tense, earnest person. Always ready for a fight, always ready to defend himself and to never give up.

Joey's not like that. Steve's a little thankful.

But when Steve gets a call from the high school, he feels his stomach drop. 

"Captain Rogers, it's about your son." 

"What about my son?" he asks, concerned, as the principal clears his throat. 

"He...well, Captain, he got sick in class...on his history teacher's desk." 

Steve sighs. Joey was what his wife called a "puker" as a kid. Steve had been, too, but somehow it was worse to see your child go that specific shade of pale green and then lose his lunch.

Joey hadn't had a vomiting episode in a few years, though. So this was...odd. And not good. 

"I'm on my way." 

*****

Joey's school isn't too far from Stark Tower, so he's there within twenty minutes. He signs in at the office for a visitor's pass and then makes a beeline for the health room. 

When he gets there Principal Cantor and the history teacher he'd met on Parents' night, Mr. Webton, are standing near the empty nurse's desk, while Joey is sleeping deeply on one of the cots. 

"Principal Cantor," Steve nods, his face full of concern. "Mr. Webton." 

"Captain," Cantor nods, looking decidedly nervous. "Thank you for coming." 

Steve crosses his arms. He's trying not to be too imposing, but his son is sick so he can't quite help himself. "What happened? Did he eat something from the lunch room that didn't agree with him?" 

"Well...no," Cantor says. "No, Captain." He looks to Mr. Webton as if to say 'this is all yours.'

Mr. Webton clears his throat and steps forward. "We were watching a video in class and the subject matter didn't sit well with your son." 

Steve frowns. "What on earth were you showing those kids?" 

Mr. Webton hesitates for a long moment before speaking again. "It was a mini-doc about you." 

Steve freezes, blinks, looks to Joey, and then to the principal and the teacher. "You-excuse me?" 

"The video was about you," Mr. Webton says, a little more confidently. "We're doing a unit on World War Two, and you were a large...a large..." 

Webton trails off, losing his brief bout of confidence with the look on Steve's face. 

"So what you're telling me is you showed my son a movie about that one time I fought in a bloody, awful war, and then died," Steve says, doing his level best to keep the shakiness from his voice. 

No one speaks.

Steve loses it then. "What is wrong with you people?! How could you be so heartless?! He may know the story of what happened, but seeing it- seeing it...played out like that?! He's a fifteen year old boy! Why would you put him - put anyone- through that?!" 

Cantor takes a small step back. "Captain-" 

"I get that this is ancient history for you people," Steve goes on, pointing a fingers. "But it's a part of our lives! Our reality! The least you coulda done was warn him!" 

Both men look ashamed, and good. They should be. 

Steve's about to lay into them again, feeling more like an officer in command than he has in many years, but a groggy voice from the cots stops him.

"Dad?" 

He gives Cantor and Webton a look that clearly says "This isn't over" before walking over to the cot.

Joey's sitting up slowly, short hair legitimately messy instead of calculatedly so, eyes drooping, skin still a little pale. 

"Hey," Steve says gently, sitting on the cot and listening to it creek. "How you feelin?" 

"Like the floor of a taxi cab," Joey replies, rubbing his eyes.

Steve grins a little. "Well, you're quoting Ghostbusters, you can't feel that terrible. C'mon. I'll take you home. Get you some ginger ale." 

He helps Joey up, one of his hands resting on his shoulder gently. He gives Cantor and Webton a murderous look as he lifts Joey's backpack and guides him out of the health room. "Expect a call from my wife, if not my lawyer." 

He can hear Principal Cantor yelp, and he smirks just a little.


End file.
